


Losing Time, Taking My Own Way Down

by This_Is_Sarcasm



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: AU, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Asher's Fireteam, First Nightstalker, Gen, Vex Timeloops are bad, iron lords - Freeform, painful realities involved with having Vex flu
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 10:09:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13761879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_Is_Sarcasm/pseuds/This_Is_Sarcasm
Summary: AU. Asher Mir is a ticking time bomb, and he knows it. The vex have altered his way of life forever; they have killed his fireteam, suffused his body and his Ghost with their tech, and he's cursed to watch the world through their eyes every time he sleeps. But one night, as the City falls, he sees something else; a Guardian, trapped in the Pyramidion as he was. Except this is no ordinary Hunter; this is Lady Darkrose, Lost to the Vault. Lady Darkrose, of the Iron Lords of the Dark Age. Allison Rose... the first Nightstalker, the one Hunters owe their title to, and very well the one who might just save humanity.





	Losing Time, Taking My Own Way Down

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on Fanfiction.net. I will be posting one chapter here a day until I reach the last one I had on FF, and then will resume updating once a month. I wanted to try putting it on Ao3 out of curiosity of this site; I will be posting my mainstream Mass Effect fic, Out of Tricks, here at a later date as well.  
> I will respond to comments in these beginning notes once I start getting them. Any information on centering text would be greatly appreciated, as chapters are cut into small segments usually identified by line breaks... which this site does not employ, so I need another way to indicate a break.  
> Enjoy, and Fare Thee Well!

Losing Time- Bob Mould

"As you see me fade away..."  
~~~~--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------~~~~

Allison Rose thought herself a simple woman. She'd had need of a weapon; so, she made one. She pulled it from the void. She spent months encroached in Fallen territory, with nothing but a knife. She had never tried to touch the void before; no outlaw ever had. The void was known to the Warlords, the Titans and Warlocks, but the outlaws knew it not. They were nothing but fire and lightning.

Except for her. The one exception. The bow had always been her weapon of choice, so it was the shape she chose. She had warped her Light to extremes in able to do it, pushed the very limits of what the chosen were able to accomplished. She'd only shared her techniques with one person, a young outlaw named Tevis.

She doubted Tevis would live to be a century old. He was cocky.

But she was smart. She kept this skill, and it's secrets, to herself now. She didn't want to draw the attention of a Warlord; or worse, those 'iron wolves' she'd hard of in latest rumors. Those rumors involved the death of Segoth and an Arcstrider named Gheleon. She had no desire to catch the attention of an Arcstrider; they were rare because they were the deadliest kind of outlaw there was.

And it was in this that she was simple; she had a dangerous new skill. She used it to survive, but kept it hidden as best she could so as not to attract attention. She didn't throw her weight around like the Warlords and the other outlaws; as far as anyone in the area knew, she was a plain and simple hunter looking to catch deer in exchange for pay and supplies.

But there was nothing simple about bandits. They were erratic, not smart at all. Kicking the weak down to make themselves look strong. And stealing her latest catch, quite the buck as well. She was simple in the fact that she decided to reclaim what was rightfully hers. But there was something not quite so simple about this particular instance... for this time, there was a hostage.

Or he would become a hostage, if she played her cards wrong.

"P-please, I'll give you anything you want just leave it alone!" he was begging, forced to his knees in front of the leader. The young man was ostensibly a traveler, in possession of nothing more than the cloths on his back and what looked to be a few supplies. He had bright blue eyes, dusty brown hair, and that haggard, worn look you always saw on those who'd come far. She stayed in the shadows. The leader held something up. The young man looked at it with fear; not fear of, but fear for.

"And why would you want this thing?" the leader laughed he held up his gun, pointing it at the young man's head. He'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time; an innocent caught up in a mess. She pulled her bow. "You had nerve, I'll give you tha-"

He cut off with a scream as he was eaten by a lance of void light. It spread outwards, catching all in it's range, snapping their arms to their sides so they were helpless. The young man cringed, clearly expecting to be caught by the void as well, but opened his eyes when he realized he was actually the only one free.

"Go!" she yelled. Instead he dove for something on the ground as she threw a ball of void at the anchored bandits. The vortex ate two, and made two more scream. Those few who were out of range of her shot finally realized they were under attack, but by then, it was too late even for them. Her hand cannon barked several times, all the while the young man lay curled on the ground clutching something to his chest.

As the void collapsed and the anchor tying the bodies together faded, she approached. He was murmuring softly, like someone trying to comfort a child. Something in his bag, which was abandonded in the dirt, moved. She strode towards it.

"Don't!" He suddenly barked. He was sitting upright now, looking at her pleadingly, thought he was obviously frightened. Who wouldn't be, of her skills? "Please don't hurt them! They haven't done anything wrong!"

"They?" she questioned. He hesitantly brought his hands away from his chest... but the Ghost he'd been guarding remained in place, it's shell spinning nervously as it eyed her. Outlaws and Warlords had a tendency to kill stray Ghosts they found; it meant less competition in the future, after all.

"You're smuggling Ghosts." she let the wry smile spread across her face as one with a black shell cautiously poked out from the bag. This man wasn't a chosen; he was a sympathizer. Her own Ghost flashed into existence.

"Oh, my. There are a lot of you." he commented. He spun in the man's direction. "How long have you been doing this for?"

He seemed frozen. One hand still hovered near the newest addition to his collection.

"Look," she threw her hands up in surrender, "I don't kill Ghosts. Not my way. Not my way to kill bystanders either. I'm just here for my catch."

"Your... catch?" he asked hesitantly.

She strode towards her deer, which had been hacked into pieces. She glowered. Waste of food. Idiots. "Yes, my catch."

"Oh, I see!" he brightened considerably. "You're just a hunter! A hunter with the light!"

"You're so smart." she commented dryly. He ignored her, looking down at the Ghost he'd saved. Now that he wasn't terrified, he looked childishly bubbly.

"Guess we don't have anything to worry about after all! If there's a hunter, there's a town!" he assured it brightly. "Now, first things first; do you have a name?"

"N-no. nobody's ever given me a name before, mister... uhh..." the Ghost trailed off in a feminine voice.

"Timur. I'm Timur, and I say; everything needs a name." Allison rolled her eyes as she salvged what she could from her kill. "Hmmm, so you're a girl... how's 'bout 'Kitty'? 'Kit' for short!"

""Kitty?'" Allison twisted to look at him incredulously. "You can't be serious, right?"

"Well, if they don't have names, I give them ones from books. I've got an Aramis, a Porthos, a Reepicheep, Eustace, Faolan, Constance, and a D'Artagnan." he explained. "So, 'Kitty', after Milady's complacent servant who didn't like her very much. Probably because she was evil."

"Oh, dear, this is awkward." her own Ghost sighed. "I'm a D'Artagnan as well."

"Oh. Well, great minds think alike!" Timur tapped the side of his head, and then jumped to his feet. "Alright, folks, back in the bag, we're coming up on civilized people! You wouldn't mind leading the way, hunter."

She heaved a sigh as he looked at her expectantly. She didn't think she could stand this bubbly villager for an hour-long trip, let alone if he decided to stay in the town she was working for. She sincerely hoped he decided not to stay.

"Very well. But as long as you're there, I don't have powers, are we clear?" she emphasized by giving a pulse of void light in her hand. He didn't seem to notice; he only beamed at her, and gather his belongings.

"In you go, Kitty. I'll get you somewhere safe, I promise." he said to the newest Ghost as he held his bag open for her.

"Thank you." she whispered before disappearing.

"So how'd you do it, hunter?" he pressed eagerly. "Learning to use the void like that, I've never heard of anything like it!"

"Something tells me you haven't met a lot of chosen." she guessed.

"No, but I've been studying the Light, how your powers work, the way the Ghosts connect to you!" she immediately regretted striking up conversation with him; once you got him started, he didn't stop. "I wish I were chosen, I could test out all my theories myself. Sadly, I don't think many Warlords or outlaws are interested in the science of how their powers work; or how they could work! I mean, look at you! If an outlaw can touch the void, what does that mean for Titans and fire? Or Warlocks and arc energy? The possibilities are endless, astounding!"  
_--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

The village had food and supplies, and had agreed to give him a horse in exchange for striking a trade deal with a village to the west. Timur had asked only for one other thing aside from those, and that was the magnet the village chief's son had been playing with. But there was no room to house him for any amount of time, and nobody wanted a stranger in their home, so she had offered to let him hole up in her spare room for the next few days. It wouldn't do for him to get sick sleeping in this weather; if he got sick, he would have to stay longer, and his eccentricities were already getting on her nerves.

"So, I need to ask; what's with the Ghosts?" they were having 'watercooler conversations' with her own Ghost. The other D'Artagnan was as eccentric as Timur. The one with the black shell she'd seen earlier, who happened to be Aramis, heard her and spoke up.

"He's taking us to Germany." he explained. "And helping us find our chosen, if our instincts don't put us too out of the way. Porthos and I were two of the first he found; the third, Athos? Found his chosen. We also helped Xavier find his, and Lucy."

"They say the Traveler is somewhere in Germany!" Timur added. "And there's a huge camp there! There's no safer place for a Ghost than there, and it's the perfect place to find a ship that can take us to America; Reepicheep and Pothos both sensed something out there, from across the sea."

"Sensed?"

"The Ghosts are like compasses, attuned to one pole; that pole being the chosen they're destined to find." Timur explain, as cheerfully as he had everything else. She refused to believe that anyone, let alone someone who spent most nights sleeping in the cold, could possibly be this constantly happy. "They were all created with a sense, of sorts; they know who they're supposed to find, they just have to search, rigorously. This sense, it's like gut feelings. My theory, is that Ghosts and their chosen posses a link through each others light, and that the direct solidification of this link is what allows for revival and access to you powers."

"If I'm a compass, I think I'm broken." Kitty sighed unhappily. "I thought I was close to finding my chosen right before those bandits showed up... now I'm not getting anything from this area anymore."

"Well, compasses can become confused or redirected in the presence of an intense power source or magnet." Timur chirped. "Maybe it's because of all these Ghosts and our hunter friend here!"

"I have a name, you know." she scowled at him.

"Well, you haven't told me it yet, and 'hunter' sounds so much better than 'outlaw'. Especially when you clearly aren't one." he said.

"I have powers; I'm an outlaw." she told him.

"'Outlaw' is a word used to describe powered gunslingers and bandits with the Light. You're not a bandit. You clearly love pointy projectiles," he pointed at the quiver of normal arrows hooked on the wall, "enough that you can't fall under the category of gunslinger, either. 'Hunter', much better describes you. So, hunter, what's you name, exactly?"

"... Allison."

She couldn't tell if she was the idiot, or if he was. She could be the idiot, because she had foolishly chosen to follow him, though at a distance. He could be the idiot, because for all his intelligence, he was entirely the dorkiest person she had ever met.

This ravine was notorious for breaking horses' legs, and he had hopped off the creature to gut an old car, of all things! Why would he care!? Cars were useless, there were no roads anymore. Horses were invaluable, as were pikes, if you had the guts to steal from the Fallen. The truly lucky could find or build a Sparrow.

If he keeps this up, he'll be dead eventually. And so would all those Ghosts.

"I kind of like him." D'Artagnan commented from her side.

"He's a dork." she shot back.

"A smart dork. If there really is a camp under the Traveler, they could need him something fierce! His theories on the Light are sound, and he knows how to make electricity!" Those who were cruel would gut dead Ghosts for a power source. But the night before heading out, and excited(and more so than usual) Timur had demonstrated a simple circuit, which he had completed using the magnet he'd gotten. He'd lit a light bulb.

She rolled her eyes. He was a dead man.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

She watched as he struck a trade deal with the next village, in exchange for fixing their aqueduct. And improving it at the same time, if the excited looks on the villagers faces were anything to go by. As she understood it, he'd set up a system to keep it from freezing over as easily.

At the village after that, he sacrificed his simple circuit to restore power to an old heater, which he promptly gave to an elderly woman who lived in the moldiest shack in the village.

Soon after that, the other D'Artagnan found his chosen. Timur brought her to the next village, and used the old car parts he'd scavenged from the ravine all those weeks ago to make a jury-rigged communications device. Allison beat a hasty retreat when a ship with the Iron Lord's blazon descended a day afterwards. She supposed there were worse people to contact for such an occasion. Timur made himself scarce as well by the time they arrived.

She lost track of him after that, and decided she'd been away from her own village long enough; it was time to bring her curiosity quest to a close and return. She waited until the Iron Lords left, and entered the village to barter for supplies. Just some water for the road, and light rations of smoked fish from the nearby river. A chosen didn't have to eat as much as a normal human, but she still liked to keep a solid diet. That, and people would notice if she never ate but stayed so healthy.

But as she was starting to head back... she heard hooves pounding the forest floor.

Her head snapped in the direction of the sound just in time to see Timur's horse charging in from her right.

"WHOA!" she shouted. It reared, and it took her a solid ten minutes for her to calm it down enough that she could see the blood on it's saddle. The muttered a swear under her breath, and mounted the beast, steering the nervous creature in the direction it had come.

It took half the day to reach the site. Dirt was kicked up, there were four bodies she didn't recognize attesting that Timur wasn't as much a pushover as she'd thought he was. D'Artagnan flashed in next to her.

"Life signs, two O'clock!" he warned. She dismounted, and at first, she didn't see him. He was just a pile of mud and blood, unrecognizable. A small light hovered over him as she rushed to his side.

"Allison?" It was Kitty, her shell smudged with mud.

"Where's the rest of you?" she rolled him over onto his back, pressing her fingers to his throat and leaning over to check his breathing. His pulse was thready, and the breath she felt on her ear was faint.

"He told them to fly north as far as they could. I... I couldn't leave him, not after..." Kitty's voice wavered. "They-they had a gun. The lead bandit had a gun. A working gun. Timur took out four of them, and then their leader, i-it was like he was bored... just... shot him and walked away like it meant nothing!"

She tried to find the hole. She found it; it punched clean through his chest, near the heart but not quite a kill hit; he would have lived if she had gotten here sooner and brought him to the village in time.

"But it's okay." she looked up at the suddenly assured voice of Kitty. The Ghost looked at her steadily, and when she spoke next, her voice was not dissimilar to that of a child who knew something to be true, and was assuring themselves out loud. "I'm not a broken compass. I was just... standing on the pole this whole time. That's why I couldn't leave him. I... have have to make our link. Once he dies."

Timur stopped breathing, but she kept her hand on his shoulder. How fitting that he should be one of us.

Kitty parted her shell, her light pulsed outwards... and a new chosen took a heaving gasp for life.  
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

"W-where are we g-going?" Timur asked through chattering teeth as they rode through the night. The air was frozen, and she could feel him shivering against her back, even his arms trembling as they remained wrapped around her waist. He wasn't used to freezing to death yet, so she let the pathetic instinct continue. A Ghost made death by temperature differences a trifle to go through, an inconvenience at worst. The cold no longer bothered her so much as the mud he had gotten all over her cloths, now dry and flaking everywhere, making the horse itchy and complacent.

"Nearby village; not the one you were at. They'll recognize you. You still have that transmitter?" she asked.

"H-how do y-you know about that?" He wound up answering his own question before she could even draw a breath to speak. "You've b-been f-f-following us? Watching u-us? N-not creepy at a-ll."

"I only did it because you looked like a dork, acted like one, and behaved like a gullible child who didn't think the worst of anyone." she told him bluntly. "Let alone like someone who carried a sword; you certainly didn't use it when we met. I knew you would get yourself killed eventually, so I followed you. Like it or not, I was right about one thing."

"And what's th-that?"

"You got yourself killed."

His tremors increased.

"Get used to it, Timur. People like us? We die a lot more after the first time than we did before we had Ghosts. It's a fact; you have more than one life to spend now. And from what I've seen, you're the kind of person to spend those lives willingly." she shrugged. "If I were you, I'd contact the Iron Lords."

"No." there was no tremble on his lips when he said it. "I... I can't. I can't b-be one of th-them; n-not possibly! I-'m not a h-hero. I don't even know... I don't even know wh-what I am! I d-don't know if I'm e-even a Warlock or a Hunter!"

"Hunter? There's no such thing as chosen called 'Hunters'." she corrected him. "You mean Titans, or Outlaws."

"Hunter sounds better than outlaw." he reaffirmed, in an echo of their old conversations. "It m-m-makes you all sound like criminals. Y-you aren't a criminal. W-well, maybe y-you're a stalker."

She didn't laugh.

"I-I-I got it a-after." she twisted to look at him. His face was barely visible on the moonless night. "The Sword. I-I g-got it in the village after y-yours."

"Impressive cutting, for a newby." She commented, putting her eyes back on the trail. "Maybe you were destined for this."

"Maybe." his voice was barely a whisper. His arms tightened around her, and he pressed closer against her to try and stay warm up. He would fail, she thought bitterly. Tonight was meant to be cold and hard. Tonight was his first night. Tonight's ice was his trial by fire, as he set along a trail not too different than the one they were traveling on. A trail to becoming something more.

She let off a small pulse of Light to comfort him, though.  
\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

A hand touched her neck, and slid to rest in the crook of her shoulder. She groaned in displeasure as the cold metal of his ring sent goosebumps along her skin.

"I hate you..." she mumbled. Were five more minutes too much to ask? He'd kept her awake all night with his metal wielding, and she'd been out for weeks scouting Venus beforehand.

"Why'd you marry me, then?" he asked with a tremor of humor in his voice.

"Perun pressured me." Thirty years ago, she wouldn't have pictured herself an Iron Lord... let alone married to the intelligent idiot she'd saved from bandits. She'd come a long way from being a nothing. Timur had started his early years as a chosen naming every freaking thing he came across with his powers. And naming everything she was and did, too.

He'd formed a sort of... standard once he finally plucked up the courage to signal the Iron Lords. He'd practically gotten down on his knees and begged her to come with him. She'd said she would 'give it a chance'. She hadn't trusted any of them at first sight. Now, she would put her life in any of their hands if it came to it.

As for Timur... she wasn't sure how it happened. Maybe she was attached to his obsession with classical music. Maybe there was something so free about the way he could tell you the first hundred numbers of pi, but still have trouble finding the sunglasses he was wearing. Maybe it was because he gave her a name. The names Timur ave to things were now the names all the Iron Lords used for things. As such, she, and Perun, were now Hunters, not outlaws. She was a Nightstalker, to be specific.

"Scoot, lovely." He squeezed in next to her on the couch, with much rearranging from the ultimately comfortable position she'd been in. She tried to find it again with her head resting against his chest. She could hear his heart thumping beneath his robes. "How did the scout go?"

"Found something odd." she told him quietly, plucking at the fabric of her night shirt. Timur's warmth was intoxicating, she found herself growing sleeping yet again because of him. He let off a small pulse of Light, and she responded in kind. With the evolution of the chosen, came evolved ways of physical communication, between other chosen and between Ghosts.

"Funny odd, or bad odd?" he asked.

"Not sure yet. Radegast wants you and I to check it out with Saladin in a few days." she told him. She shut her eyes, and felt his chin dip to rest on her head as he grew tired as well. "Best ways to describe it... kinda looked like a vault."  
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

"These plates... I have a feeling about them." Timur said. He was crouched on one of said plates, brows knit together as he put together this new puzzle. He looked up at Saladin. "See if there are any more."

The Titan nodded, patting his friend on the shoulder before ascending the hill. She watched as Timur and Kitty took scans and tried to pry a piece of plating off the outer ring of the vex technology. She took a deep breath. Here goes another try...

"Timur. I really think we should talk about... it." she started. His right hand slipped, and blood welled from where he cut himself on the vex brass. She saw his adam's apple convulse as he swallowed hard.

"I'd rather not." his voice was quiet, subdued, not Timur-ish at all. It always was whenever she tried to get him talking about it. It was stupid... but it hurt him. And, quite frankly, the other Iron Lords, the other chosen, had a right to know as well. And keeping a hurt like that locked up wasn't healthy. There were some things a Ghost couldn't heal... and heartbreak was one of them. He'd gone usually silent for days after they found out, after he'd found out, all those years ago.

They couldn't have children. Chosen couldn't have children, they were all steril, all of them. They'd spent some years trying... and one frustrated day, he'd looked to get to the bottom of the problem. He'd thrown the only datapad the Iron Lords had out the window and into the river when it gave him the results. Timur was the kind of man who'd wanted children ever since he was a child... and she could give him herself for centuries, but she could not give him kids. That possibility had been stripped away from them from the moment they died the first time.

It was hard to ignore the way the truth ripped at him. It was hard to ignore the guilt on her own mind whenever she saw Perun steal fond glances, wishful, maybe hopeful glances at the children of the nearby village. It was hard to ignore the way Saladin and Jolder looked at each other, and to know they had no idea, either of them, that their status as chosen had taken as much as it had given.

But she couldn't find it in her heart to tell them. And so it came down to her to convince Timur to move past his grief and send them down the same spiral he was in, for their own good. So they could complete that spiral, and come to terms. Because if they didn't find out now, they would find out later, and they would put two and two together. They would figure out he'd been holding out on them... and that confrontation wouldn't end well for anyone.

"Timur." She crouched down next to him, placing her hands on his shoulders, and pulsed her Light against his own assertively. Gently, but assertively. "We can't carry this forever. They deserve to know you looked into it... and they deserve to know what you found. No matter how terrible it is."

"Not here. Not now." he whispered.

"Timur, I found two more. One at the entrance, another nearby." Saladin's voice interrupted their conversation. Timur cleared his throat before replying.

"They seem to activate when we stand on them. Lets try activating all three and see what happens." he said. He looked up at her. "Stand on the other plate?"

"This conversation isn't over." she told him, before standing and trotting in the direction Saladin had gone.

"I know it isn't..." she barely herd him murmur.  
\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

Standing on the plates had made the vex angry. It also opened the vault door, much to Timur's excitement. They now strode alone foreign passage ways of vex design, the way lit by Allison and Saladin, both of whom held their Light in their hands while their Warlock companion dawdled to inspect every pebble they came across.

"Oh, why did I have to get the one who's fascinated by dirt?" Allison bemoaned.

"Not just any dirt!" her husband chirped back as they came into a vast cavern. "Vex dirt! Acasual dirt! No-longer-dirt-in-the-sense-we-understand-it! Fantastic dirt!"

"Yes, we have all been made aware of your love of dirt." Saladin rolled his eyes, sending sparks of arc light through the air with his hand, leaving a file trail of particles that continued to glow.

"Put it on a throw pillow." His Ghost joked wryly.

"Dart, want to see what's out there?" She asked her own Ghost. He flashed in, and flew out over the cavernous drop presented to them. There was another cave entrance on the other side of the platform, but she wanted to be certain they weren't missing anything.

"There's an entrance, just twenty feet from the edge. I can tell you when to let off a burst." D'Artagnan called back. She nodded, and looked back at her companions.

"Anyone want to take the fun way around instead of the boring old cave entrance?" She asked. Timur raised his hand.

"Me, me! ME! ME! ME!" he bounced on the balls of his feet, more than ever looking like an overexcited school child. He took a running leap off the cliff, twisting in midair as he did so. "Geronimo!"

Saladin sighed. "I wish you wouldn't encourage him."

"As his wife, there's a balance; I need to encourage him or he'll hate me. I also have to stop him from blowing our base up." She chuckled. "It's a complicated life filled with missing eyebrows and occasionally being hooked up to amp measurement devices... at least, if you're Gheleon."

The Arcstrider had not enjoyed Timur's quest to find out if the Hunter's voltage output could rival a nuclear reactor.

She jumped after Timur, listening to her Ghost's signal, and let out a burst of light to do a 'second jump', and land on the new ledge that had been hiding under their feet. Her favorite Warlock was already examining the walls. Deep from within said walls, from somewhere along the tunnels, she thought she heard a sound. One she couldn't describe... something un-vex. Something... dark... if she had any words to describe it...

"Darkrose?" she nearly jumped at the sound of Saladin's voice directly in her ear. Darkrose had become her nickname, supposedly because of her skills with the void. Tinasha-3 was in a similar predicament.

"We gonna get moving?" Timur inquired. Had neither of them heard that sound? The vex were connected to the same Darkness that cause the collapse, if that Darkness still lingered here... she had a feeling it did.

"I think we need to go back. Get backup." she said.

"Why? The vex are of no problem." Timur's brow knit together again, this time in worry. "Or perhaps that's far too convenient?"

He fiddled with the amulet around his neck, running his thumb over the swirling patterns of metalwork as he did so. He'd made her one similar to it. "Yes, maybe we should..."

"We came down here." Saladin told them firmly. "We need to scout this tunnel, at least a little, before we return."

Another unearthly screech. This time, all three chosen heard it.

"We need to confirm that." The Titan's voice was a hoarse whisper that swallowed terror. She pulled her bow, taking point as both her fellow Iron Lords readied their weapons. Another sound as they came upon a myriad of complicated platforms, the drop leading at least a hundred foot fall. The sound again, this time closer. She held up a hand. She couldn't see the Darkness. If one of it's agents was here... she'd heard some remained, nightmare stories meant to scare children. She'd never seen one before. She put away her bow, letting it dissipate into the void, and turned herself to shadow and mist before stepping outwards.

When you existed as nothing more than particles of void, your relationship with the dimensions of the physical became... complicated.

But even the gifts, the invisibility, the invulnerability that shadestep gave her, could not protect her from what she found herself face-to-face with on the third platform down. She could not repress her scream. She brought up her bow, returning to the physical plane so as to work with it, using it at a sheild between herself and the dark, gangling creature she now faced.

"ALLISON!" she heard Timur screaming her name. She tried to stab the Darkness with an arrow of void, but it grabbed her arm.

"RUN! BY ALL YOU LOVE, RUN!" She screamed, terror mixing with agony and anguish as it wretched her off the platform. She caught a fleeting glimpse of Timur, kicking and screaming, struggling against the arms of the Titan that held him back, before both of them were out of sight, and she fell to the abyss.

My love, forgive me...

Her vision went dark suddenly.


End file.
